Donald Trump’s second presidency will take a novel path this week as he turns to Congress to enshrine part of his effort to transform the country — after weeks of wielding vast and questionable executive power.
House Republicans hope to vote on a bill to extend federal funding until the end of September. If they succeed, after dropping talks with Democrats on a bipartisan measure, they’ll trigger a showdown in the Senate that could end in a damaging government shutdown.
Democrats will then have to decide whether they’ll oppose the measure by mounting a filibuster. If they block it, they will risk taking the blame for shutting down the government unless they can convince the public it’s Trump’s fault. If they allow the measure to pass, they could again look like they lack the strength and purpose to resist Trump’s presidency.
The drama ahead of Friday’s funding deadline could have a serious impact on the lives and well-being of millions of Americans. A shutdown could force essential government workers to go without pay and see many more furloughed. It would disrupt services including airport security, border crossings and national parks. It would deepen the turmoil sparked by Trump’s return to the Oval Office as his brinksmanship on tariffs rocks the economy and Elon Musk’s indiscriminate shredding of the federal government causes chaos.
And Trump only heightened this uncertainty when he declined to rule out the possibility of a recession this year in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” Vowing to go forward with his trade war policies, Trump dismissed a slide in the stock markets, which are usually one of his favorite measures of economic performance.
A critical test of Speaker Johnson and Senate Democrats
The coming congressional theater will first pose an early test of House Speaker Mike Johnson’s capacity to enact Trump’s agenda with a minuscule Republican majority. Stopgap spending bills generally alienate conservative fiscal hawks and members of the far-right Freedom Caucus. But Trump is demanding unity from his side and is billing this measure — which freezes top-line spending but raises funding for his priorities, including defense and border security — as a down payment on deep government cuts to come.
Republican leaders are telling members that passing the stopgap funding measure, known as a continuing resolution, would give them more time to codify Musk’s government cuts in a future bill and avoid a GOP split that could hamper Trump’s ambitious agenda, including his push for huge tax cuts.
Still, the failure to produce detailed spending plans for individual government departments and the decision to push vital decisions down the road raises doubts about the House majority’s capacity to function. The bill does not, for instance, deal with the need to raise the government’s borrowing limit — another looming crisis that could cause economic contagion within weeks without prompt action. It also fails to codify Musk’s swing at federal government jobs and programs into law — perhaps because they’re increasingly divisive and could threaten GOP unity.